Kids Planet Ainsdale

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff prepare rewarding learning experiences and wait eagerly for the children to arrive. Children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), are eager to re-join staff and their friends and they are excited about their day ahead. Each child is valued and included in all that the nursery provides. Due to the high-quality relationships that they experience, children feel safe. Some children are so confident, they do not even look back at their parents as they leave.

Leaders are highly ambitious for children. They want them to experience a rewarding and memorable education that provides much new knowledge. Children benefit from exploring the real, everyday objects that the staff set out. They are motivated to try out their ideas using many interesting wood and metal objects.

Staff explain clearly to children the nursery's golden rules for behaviour. In the toddler room, they help children to begin to recognise and name feelings, such as happy, proud and angry. Children understand how to use their 'kind hands' and walking feet. They learn to help one another, such as to assist their friend to put their hood up before going to play out in the rain. Children become confident, caring and friendly.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• Leaders have developed a clear and ambitious curriculum. They have thought carefully about the key knowledge that they want children to learn and when. Staff help children to learn how to behave themselves, including how to play and cooperate with others. Children are well prepared for their future learning.
• Leaders are determined to provide children with authentic experiences that support their learning. In the toddler room, for instance, they provide the children with pomegranates, oranges, lemons and limes to explore when they play at cooking. They make sure that staff support children's explorations very effectively, such as talking about the smell of the sour lemon. The interesting ways in which staff organise learning activities means that all children learn well.
• Staff help children gain new knowledge, and to practise and refine their understanding of important new learning, by building on what they already know and can do. However, there are times when staff do not adapt their planning to provide high-quality, meaningful learning. For example, two-year-old children sometimes wait longer than they are capable for food to be served at teatime. At these times, some children are not learning the social skills that they need.
• Leaders ensure that staff in each room nurture children's personal development. Most of the time, staff gently encourage and support children, for instance to try their best and to try again when learning becomes hard. Although children develop good levels of confidence over time, leaders do not think through the settling-in arrangements for new babies as carefully as possible. As a result, some babies do not settle well.
• Throughout the nursery, leaders make sure that children learn many stories, songs and rhymes. For example, during song time in the baby room, staff and babies jointly use musical instruments while choosing to shake and jiggle their whole bodies to the music they make. Children gain important knowledge of fiction and non-fiction books through story times and through their frequent access to books with staff.
• The special educational needs coordinator takes many well-considered steps to help staff to identify and meet the needs of children with SEND. For instance, she makes effective use of advice from other agencies when guiding staff to support children's learning. Children with SEND learn successfully.
• The nursery works with parents and carers effectively. For instance, leaders devise small take-home bags for parents that contain supportive advice, such as on toilet training, safe sleep and oral health. Parents say that they, and their children, benefit from the help that leaders and staff offer.
• Leaders provide staff with the coaching, support and training that they need to deepen their knowledge of the curriculum and how children learn. Staff become confident, happy and highly effective in their roles.
• The curriculum helps children to learn positively about similarities and differences. Staff organise talent shows for children, which help them celebrate their individual strengths. Children are developing an understanding of their own uniqueness.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to provide mealtime routines which help toddlers to develop their social skills
• strengthen the settling-in procedure for babies to better meet their needs.